Sweet almond verbena is a small single or multi-trunk deciduous "tree" with delicate-looking foliage and a constant show of 6"- 8" spikes of feathery white flowers. It's known for its unbelievable fragrance of a heavenly honey-vanilla scent. Prefers full sun. Averages 12' tall. Butterflies love it.

Photo By Kathy Huber

Sweet autumn clematis forms a mass of starry white blooms.

Photo By William C. Welch

'Mrs. James Hendry' crinum

Photo By Chris Wiesinger/Southern Bulb Co

'Summer Nocturne' crinum

Photo By Chris Wiesinger/Southern Bulb Co

'Summer Nocturne' crinum is a low-care bulb for Southern gardens.

Photo By John Everett

Mexican clethra is a low-maintenance evergreen with fingerlike clusters of white summer blooms.

Photo By John Everett

Mexican clethra is an ornamental evergreen tree.

Photo By John Everett

Mexican clethra

Photo By John Everett

Leo, a Swiss shepherd, sniffs a 'Maggie' rose.

Transplanted Northerners often miss sweet-scented lilacs, which don't bloom well here because of our short winters and long summers.

While the bond between fragrance and memory is strong, perhaps they'll come to appreciate the intriguing scents that perfume Southern gardens and give us a sense of place.

Scents, just as color, play seasonal roles in gardens. Paperwhites begin the new year on a musky note. Star jasmine blankets fences with sweet white blooms midspring. Two iconic scents - lemony magnolia and heady gardenia - float through our May gardens.

By summer, a surprising number of floral notes are wafting on our humid air. Some flowers keep their scent close; others aren't so shy. Some are more fragrant by day, others by night.

On my early morning garden rounds in late July, I sink my nose into the velvety petals of my favorite rose, 'Maggie,' to take in the rich spice. Yet from a distance I can easily sample the fragrance of the aptly named banana shrub's yellow blooms before the heat wears it down.

Many summer-scented flowers grow more intense at dusk, which is ideal since evenings are for relaxing or entertaining outdoors. Fragrances that fill the night garden bring this black-and-white world to life.

Old-fashioned four o'clocks become sweeter as the sun goes down. Mexican clethra's light cinnamon scent drifts from fingerlike clusters of small creamy-white blooms. This less-known small, shapely evergreen tree is worth the hunt at nurseries that carry native plants.

The softball-size, pink-blushed blooms of 'Summer Nocturne' crinum surround their lush clumps of straplike leaves with a delicate sweetness, summer into fall. The low-care beauty, available from southern bulbs.com, adapts to various soils in sun to part shade.

The elegant 'Mrs. James Hendry' crinum freshens the night air with a fragrance horticulturist Linda Gay likens to lemon cake mix.

Honeysuckle drums up memories of worry-free childhood summer nights. The intense angel's trumpet holds me in the present. Sweet almond verbena is a tall, gawky thing until transformed into a presentable small tree with a pair of clippers. But one whiff of the potent almond scent on a warm night, and there's no question why a gardener would take the time to shape the lanky plant. The smell-them-before-you-see-them white blooms continue into fall.

Equally intoxicating, night-blooming jasmine is a scrambling, shrublike perennial not exactly known for its looks. But it's worth tucking in a corner for the powerfully sweet, tiny greenish-white blooms, midsummer into fall, when white berries emerge.

Less cloying is the butterfly gingers' clean, sweet scent I describe as gardenia-light. The fluttery white flowers, ideal for a moon garden, top 4- to 5-foot leafy stalks that rise from naturalizing rhizomes.

'John Fanick' summer phlox is a long-lived, multiplying perennial that's fragrant during the day. But it catches my attention with its vanilla-scented bouquet when I slip into the garden at night. The 3- to 4-foot-tall stems are topped with domed clusters of pink blooms late spring-fall.

Nicotiana, an underused 3-foot-tall flowering tobacco with long, slender tubular blooms, is also a standout during the night shift.

As August nears, I look forward to masses of starry-white sweet autumn clematis blooms to join the summer flowers and lead a fragrant march into fall.